The Northern Steppe
Tent-folk
Herders of the open country. They carry all they own and fear nothing on four legs.
“He was the father of such as dwell in tents, and of such as have cattle.”
Their story
Long ago, one of the sons of the first city looked at its walls and decided he did not like them. He took his cattle and his family and his tent, and he walked out onto the grasslands, and he never came back. The Tent-folk are his children, and they have been walking ever since.
They live on the great Northern Steppe, following their herds from one green valley to the next as the seasons turn. They have no city, no wall and no king, and they want none. Everything a Tent-folk family owns travels on the backs of their oxen and their own broad shoulders. They are strong as the oxen they drive, hardy as the grass of the steppe, and wiser about beasts than any people alive. A Tent-folk child can calm a frightened bull with a hand on its neck, and a Tent-folk elder can read the passage of a wolf pack in the bend of the grass.
They trade with both cities, selling wool and hides and cheese in the markets of the gilded city and the city of cedar alike, and they take no side as a people. Each Tent-folk chooses for themselves which road to walk. Around the cooking fires at night, the argument over which road is right is as old as the tents themselves.
Their look and ways
Wool and hide, weathered by sun and wind. Broad shoulders, steady eyes, laughter that carries across a valley. The men tie back thick hair with wool cord and keep their beards short, the women wear many small braids tasseled in bright wool beneath felt caps, and their Hide-and-horn gear is black goat-hair wool and fleece cream hung with madder-red tassels, with a horn herding whistle on a thong and a sling at every belt. Tent-folk are fiercely hospitable to any guest who comes in peace and fiercely dangerous to anything that threatens the herd.
Starting attributes
| Attribute | Start | What it does for you |
|---|---|---|
| Strength | 24 | Adds force to every weapon blow and physical art, and lets you carry more. For defenders, it is also the well of their power. |
| Stamina | 22 | Raises your maximum health. The Tent-folk are among the hardest people in the world to bring down. |
| Agility | 20 | Together with your Defense skill, your chance to dodge a blow. For hunters, it also makes every hunter's art strike harder. |
| Wisdom | 18 | Strengthens every healing and ward, deepens a healer's well of power, and adds a little resistance against all eight kinds of harm. |
| Intelligence | 16 | Makes signs, spells and songs strike harder, and deepens the well of power for wielders of signs and voices of the company. |
Innate resistances
- Cold, from countless nights under the open sky.
- Poison, from a lifetime of knowing herbs and serpents.
Both grow stronger with every level you gain.
Innate gifts
- Beast-wise
- wild beasts are slow to join a fight you start, so you can take them one at a time.
- Long Stride
- you travel faster on foot when no enemy is near.
Traditions
At every tenth level, choose one:
- For the body: Herder's Frame, Strong Back or Surefoot, raising your Stamina, Strength or Agility.
- For protection: Open Sky against cold, Serpent-wise against poison, or Hardy against disease.
- For skill: Slinger with ranged weapons, Herd-tender to hold and calm what you face, or Weathered to dodge.
- Gifts found nowhere else:
- Pitch Camp: raise a camp where your companions recover faster and build rested strength.
- Pathfinder: every creature for a long way around shows on your map.
- Herdsman's Calm: calm a lesser beast so it will not attack you for a time.
Natural callings
With Strength and Stamina together, the Tent-folk are born defenders: Sentries and Berserkers, Shepherds and Predators. Many make sturdy healers too, and more than a few Tent-folk Shepherds have kept real flocks before they ever kept a company.
Choose the Tent-folk if
You want to be strong, free and at home anywhere under the sky. You want a people with no walls and no masters, who judge a stranger by how they treat the herd. The Tent-folk will follow you to the ends of the earth. They have already been there.
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